Regular Cubes

Regular Cubes

A regular cube is a cube that is not a linked cube, virtual cube, or local cube. (Every cube is regular, linked, virtual, or local.)

A regular cube is based on tables in the databases specified in the data sources of the cube's partitions. In contrast, linked cubes and virtual cubes are based on other cubes.

A regular cube must contain at least one partition. A regular cube can contain multiple partitions provided that you have installed Analysis Services for Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Enterprise Edition. Linked cubes, virtual cubes, and local cubes do not contain partitions.

Regular cubes have aggregations and require storage space to store them. In contrast, linked, virtual, and local cubes do not have aggregations. Linked and virtual cubes use the aggregations of the cubes on which they are based. Aggregation data for a regular cube is stored in subfolders of the Data folder of the Analysis server on which the cube is defined, or in subfolders of the Data folder of another Analysis server, or in the databases specified in the data sources of the cube's partitions, or in a combination of these locations, depending on the storage modes and types of the cube's partitions. For more information, see Partition Storage and Remote Partitions.

If a regular cube contains partitions with a storage mode of multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP), the cube also requires storage space for the copies of the source data for those partitions. In contrast, linked and virtual cubes do not require storage space for this purpose. However, a local cube with a storage mode of MOLAP contains a compressed copy of the local cube's fact table data.

A regular cube is the only variety of cube that can be write-enabled. For more information, see Write-Enabled Cubes.

In Analysis Manager, a regular cube is identified by the following icon.